So, you all know I'm a Transformers fan, but this early morning my own fandom may have confounded my attempt to acquire Transformer goods. To skip the context and get right to the silliness of this all, skip the next five paragraphs...
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Last year I did that whole "100 Days Of Transformers" thing. You remember, I bought the
Chinese box set of the entire series, and I watched all 98 episodes of the original Transformers (G1) animated series, plus the Scramble City OVA, plus the (animated) 1986 movie (again), which at one episode a day took exactly a hundred days.
While it was a good experience overall, it reminded me that a lot of the appeal came from straight-up nostalgia, as there were a few episodes that weren't that pleasant to endure. Surprised that Beast Wars (or "Beasties", as it's known on YTV in Canada) is already twelve years old, I decided tracking down the DVDs for this series was in order. Sure, the computer graphics may have aged, but the stories are much better, at least percentage-wise compared to G1, especially in the second and third seasons. Along with the sequel series, Beast Machines, I plan to go through a "78 days of Beast Wars/Machines" marathon.
The problem is that Beast Wars (on DVD) is hard to find because it's out of print. And Beast Wars isn't bundled as a complete series, at least not as far as I know, so acquiring all the episodes means finding each individual season. The rarity means I may have to buy used copies from more than one seller, so I'm going to be paying a lot for shipping and they're not likely going to be brand new. As if it wasn't bad enough that I seem to have to pay over a hundred dollars to acquire a new copy of a single season. I saw some cheap ones on Amazon.com, but those were from sellers - not directly from Amazon themselves - and those particular sellers don't ship to Canada. Seriously, what's up with that? And the ones that did sell to Canada were asking for ludicrous prices, about as much as the Canadians on Amazon.ca were selling them - or more. And that's even before factoring in the shipping.
I managed to get the first season from a French Canadian on eBay for much less than the usual going rate, and with low shipping rates, thank goodness. I asked the seller if he had the other two. He told me he got the bilingual English/French version of season 1, which is why he was selling the English-only one, but as there were never bilingual versions of seasons 2 and 3, he would rather keep his English-only copies of those than to not have them at all. Makes sense. Didn't help me, however.
I received the first season in the mail a couple days ago, and became more determined to pick up the rest of the series. And this is where the mess happened this morning... (Sorry about the wordiness above, I thought some context was in order...)
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On eBay I found a listing for the complete second season of Beast Wars. Auctions are annoying; I would rather click "Buy It Now" whenever it's available, and here it wasn't. Also, it was ending at approximately 2:30 AM this morning, a rather inconvenient time. (Coincidence: Anyone catching the IMAX version of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen at the midnight showing would be finishing up at that moment.) Fearing those "snipers" who always bid in the last few seconds, I decided not to increase my maximum bid too much until then, but that would mean waking up before 2:30. Last night I left my maximum bid at $55 (US), even though I would have been willing to pay maybe $80 for it. A bit pricey for two DVDs, but hey, it's still cheaper than elsewhere I've seen.
I didn't want to touch my usual alarm clock that wakes me up at 5:45 AM since I thought I might be too lazy to change the time again. In retrospect this was my first, and therefore, most major mistake... Instead of using that, I set the alarm on my DS to wake me up at 2:15 AM, a bit before the end of the auction. I tested the alarm, made sure the volume was good, and went to sleep.
I woke up to an odd sound. First instinct was, "oh, that's the alarm I set for the auction." I reached over to the DS and touched the screen, which is supposed to shut it off. Nothing happened. The strange alarm sound continued. I turned the volume all the way down on the DS. The alarm was still going, and it certainly wasn't the DS's. What could it be? I was still groggy and tried to think of what else it could be. I looked at the clock and saw it was midnight. Then it dawned on me that I had earlier (like over 150 days ago) set a countdown on my cellphone to the release date of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Funny I didn't recognize it earlier, but it was only recently that I had bought the Transformers "transforming sound" as a ringtone for my phone (also, it plays the Transformers animated movie theme when I receive a call) and didn't ever hear it being played repeatedly and muted while sitting in my drawer. I hardly referred to the countdown on my phone, so it was stupid to have. I turned off the alarm on my cellphone and turned the alarm back on on the DS. While the countdown was an annoyance, it didn't directly jeopardize my chances of winning the second season of Beast Wars - but if you've been reading this paragraph carefully you can already see the mistake I made.
I woke up at 3:35 AM. I blinked and thought "WTF? Wasn't the alarm supposed to go off over an hour ago?" I got up and looked at the DS, and it was asking if I wanted to shut the alarm off, and it appeared to be the same screen that appears when you touch the screen. As I wasn't hearing any alarm I wondered if it was possible for me to have touched it in my sleep but thought it was silly that even if it was touched that (a) it would still prompt you to press a button to actually turn it off, or that (b) when this screen comes up that it wouldn't ring even when the alarm time came around. A short while later I realized I was most likely wrong in both of these assumptions, regardless of if I touched it. Did you catch my mistake in the previous paragraph?
The volume was still all the way down! When I was trying to shut down what was actually my cellphone alarm, I turned down the volume of the DS. Though I remembered to set the alarm again, I had forgotten to turn the volume back up, so it was totally useless!
Knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep with the suspense of whether I won the auction, I turned on the computer in my room. And - perhaps unsurprisingly - I had lost.
Now, there's no guarantee that I would've won it, even if I had squeezed in a last-minute $80 bid. But at least I would've known that I tried my best, and not disqualified myself, as it were, by not setting a trusted and recognizeable alarm.
Ironic that the countdown for Revenge Of The Fallen may have stopped me from acquiring Beast Wars.Oh, and here's some insult to injury - I couldn't get to sleep (other than a twenty-minute nap including a dream about Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom 3 or something, it was bizarre) - so if I had known I was going to have a couple hours less sleep last night I should've gone to see the midnight showing of Revenge Of The Fallen anyway! This would have freed up Friday, which is good since other stuff is potentially going on that night - and according to the Facebook event responses I'm thinking I may be seeing it nearly alone on Friday anyway so it could've been just as fun, if not more so, seeing it this morning.
*sigh*
On a semi-related note, why can I not find the original Canadian "Beasties" opening anywhere on the Internet? All I see on YouTube are the "Beast Wars" openings. The opening for season 1 is particularly bad. Sure, "Beasties" is a dumb name (YTV's aversion to "war" in titles, hence another of Mainframe's shows, "War Planets", being renamed "Shadow Raiders"...WTF), but at least in the original opening the music and synchronization isn't mutilated. At least from what I remember; I sure wish I could compare.
